Accepted for/Published in: Interactive Journal of Medical Research
Date Submitted: Nov 7, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 3, 2023
Towards a holistic platform for health boosting: A blockchain-based approach.
ABSTRACT
Background:
In modern societies, many of the diseases and deaths that occur could be prevented by healthy lifestyle habits. These healthy lifestyle habits are included in the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and the Physical Activity Guidelines of the World Health Organization, and in the Healthy Eating Guidelines of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization. Based on this, a platform for monitoring and promoting healthy lifestyle habits in the adult population is proposed. Besides this, the Physical Activity Messaging Framework is used to maintain contact with the user.
Objective:
To propose and design a holistic platform for the promotion of the practice of physical activity and healthy eating through challenges targeted on the general population, using scientific evidence with the support of blockchain technology as a gamification tool to foster competition among users as a side effect of transparency and competition.
Methods:
An analysis of the existing literature related to the object of study is performed to establish the starting point, and a blockchain platform was designed and deployed to carry out the promotion and monitoring of the proposed challenges.
Results:
After exploring the existing literature, it is observed that blockchain technology has been applied in the field of physical activity and health, but without leveraging the special features that this technology can really bring. Taking this into account, a simple tool for the user is provided with a scalable and economical deployment for service providers, with satisfactory results in the experimental tests.
Conclusions:
The emergence of new technologies, such as blockchain technology opens the possibility of offering new services to the society. Therefore, strategies have been developed to monitor and improve adherence to healthy lifestyle habits, using gamification techniques, through flexible challenges adapted to different populations. Due to its characteristics, the blockchain network facilitates the registration and monitoring of the user's progress in a reliable and transparent manner.
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Copyright
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